A government injection of NT$4.7 billion (US$158 million) to improve hospital services and increase nurses’ welfare and salaries from 2009 through this year has had a very limited impact and might have boosted hospitals’ profits instead, the Consumers’ Foundation said yesterday.
Chairperson Joann Su (蘇錦霞) said the foundation had interviewed several nurses and heard about their “unreasonable” working conditions, such as difficulty taking leave, staff shortages, frequent shift changes and disorderly work schedules.
Su said the Department of Health had earmarked about NT$830 million in 2009, NT$830 million in 2010, NT$1 billion last year and NT$2 billion this year exclusively for improving the quality of nursing care, promoting nurses’ welfare and employing more nursing personnel.
In addition to the earmarked funding, the total budget provided by the Bureau of National Health Insurance to hospitals increased by NT$14.6 billion in 2009, NT$11.4 billion in 2010, NT$11.6 billion last year and NT$16.1 billion this year, for a total increase of NT$53.7 billion in four years, said National Health Insurance Medical Expenditure Negotiation Committee representative Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁), a former chairman of the foundation.
However, figures provided by the department showed that the average monthly increase in nursing personnel last year was 1.92 percent, or a total of 1,709 new nurses, foundation secretary-general Chen Chih-yi (陳智義) said.
Based on last year’s funding of NT$1 billion, divided by the 1,709 new nurses, the nurses should have had an average monthly salary of at least NT$49,000, which is slightly higher than the average salary for nurses, Chen said.
However, the large increase in the hospitals’ budgets did not go toward improving the quality of care or nurses’ welfare, he said.
“Consumers pay more and more money to improve the quality of care and nurses’ welfare, but the actual improvements are very limited,” Hsieh said, adding that nurses and medical personnel continue to be exploited by hospitals.
Data from the National Union of Nurses’ Associations shows that the earmarked funds had no impact on nurses’ working conditions, Su said.
Nurses on the day shift had to take care of between eight and 13 patients at the same time, 10 to 20 patients during night shifts and 20 to 30 on late night shifts, Su said.
The extremely heavy workload has led to nurses quitting and people receiving poor healthcare, Hsieh said.
About 7 percent of nursing positions are currently vacant, which means about 7,000 new nurses are needed in Taiwan, he said.
“It’s not a problem that can be solved by continuously increasing the budgets for hospitals, because the problem lies with hospitals making more profits by exploiting medical workers,” he said.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS